


Just Be Here

by grafitti



Series: Soon, Soon, I'll Fit In Too [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Homelessness, I love hammering out random words and publishing them irresponsibly, Living Together, M/M, Multi, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), The rating is only for swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 11:45:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15556995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grafitti/pseuds/grafitti
Summary: Hank had his house. Markus had New Jericho. But Connor? Connor had the streets, because he didn't have anything else.After living on the streets for several weeks after the demonstration, Hank forces Connor to come back home with him.





	Just Be Here

Hank went home after the demonstration, because the house belonged to him. Home to his dog Sumo, a television to watch the latest ball game on, and if he felt so inclined, home to a glass bottle to lose himself in when he relapsed into sorrow for his son's death, although he did his best to curb his habit after Connor repeatedly reminded him of the chemical makeup of everything he chose to imbibe.

Markus went home after the demonstration too, because he belonged there. Home to his ailing father Carl and an estranged brother with whom he started to foster a familial relationship, but most of his days he spent in New Jericho, a ramshackle collection of abandoned homes on the outskirts of the city to care for the growing number of deviants that lived there. Markus belonged there too.

Connor only ever stayed in the pristine white storage stalls at CyberLife Tower, or occasionally just stayed in standby mode at the empty desk in the precinct – but now those both were closed to him. CyberLife Tower was closed to everyone except for essential personnel, and conducted all maintenance and repair for deviants at off-site locations in a desperate attempt to try and repair their image. So where would he go?

Nothing belonged to him, and he belonged nowhere.

So it was fitting, he thought, that he be like any other transient and take to the streets. That was appropriate. An android like him didn't belong in a human home, filled with things that he only understood from an analytical perspective due to his programming, and he didn't belong in Jericho, full of deviants that clung to life and its comforts so much more than he did – people that he would have easily subdued and neutralized not too long ago.

The streets of Detroit were dark, yet glowed with a purple neon sheen from storefront lights and the swirled oil rainbows on the surface of rain-filled potholes. He sat on a flattened cardboard box – not that he needed a cushion, but to protect the only clothing he had from the rough concrete texture. Somewhere to his right, a creaky metal door opened, the light from the building spilling out as an employee stood in the doorway for a smoke break.

“Hey.” It was better that he was an android – these sorts of weather conditions could easily hurt a human.

“Hey, _hobo_ ,” came the voice again, insistent. Connor looked up to see a familiar face, blanching when he recognized it – the owner of Jimmy's Bar, Jimmy Peterson, whose identity he analyzed when he first searched for Hank Anderson. Was he really that close to the bar?

“Dumbass plastic,” muttered Jimmy, pushing his dreads out of the way as he leaned a little further out of the doorway. “Aren't you Hank's android? That freaky RoboCop guy?”

“Yes,” said Connor. “I am.”

“Wow. Now you look like a sad sack of shit,” snorted Jimmy. “Why are you sitting in a dirty alley like a junkie? This what androids get up to in their spare time?”

“ _No_ ,” said Connor defensively. “I'm just –“ he swung around a hand at his surroundings – what the hell was he supposed to say? That he liked it in the dirty alley? “ – _here_.” The bar owner sighed, flicking a burning slug of ash from his cigarette at the plastic hobo.

“You coming or what?” Jimmy held the door open for him.

“C-Coming!” Connor sputtered, jumping to his feet to comply. In the back of the bar, Connor swiped cold rain off his leather coat, the droplets flung onto the mat-covered floor of the tiny kitchen. Orange squares popped up as he automatically analyzed every ding and scrape on the edges of the kitchen things – the bar was given a B grade in their last health inspection, which had one more month until expiry. Fairly good, all things considered.

“God, you're dripping all over my floor,” complained Jimmy. “Hang your shit up.”

“If I may ask,” started Connor, following Jimmy into the main room of the bar. The patrons of the bar trailed their eyes warily across him, with more than half the grizzled drunkards grimacing at the light of his LED. “Why are you bringing me in here? Judging from the 'No Android' sign that you had the last time I was here, you don't feel too positively toward androids.”

“Hank's looking for you,” said Jimmy. “That's all. He almost started hangin' up Lost Dog signs with your face on them.”

“...Did he?” Jimmy sent a deadpan glare at him. No. That was supposed to be a joke. “...Never mind.”

“Just...” Jimmy sighed, then pointed to a chair in a corner by the bar. “Sit your ass down.” Not thinking much more about it, Connor sat down, looking around at patrons he hadn't seen before to pull up their criminal records just for the novelty of it – only he couldn't do that anymore. He didn't have the swathe of database access grants that he did before the demonstration. A faint rumble of a low voice caught his ear.

Jimmy spoke quietly into the landline that hung from the wall – ancient technology, as far as Connor was concerned. No human would be able to hear the voice coming from the receiver, but his senses were a little more fine-tuned than most.

“ _He's there?_ ” Hank demanded through the line. “ _When the fuck did he get there? Hold on, hold on, don't answer that. I'm coming._ ” Hank was coming? He was on the way? Connor twisted his head back and forth, grimacing as his troubled mind rolled over.

Oh, how he was so tempted to stay – he missed Hank. Their partnership. Their friendship. Sumo. And yet, without so much as a goodbye, he ran out the front of the bar, ignoring Jimmy's angry yell and the jangle of the doorbell above him. Out, out into the rain.

And it was pouring. Heavy breaths, panting as if his small lung sac was anything more than decorative. Connor couldn't feel it but the rain was cold, sliding down artificial skin to draw a map of where his body connected with the misty Detroit nights. Hank shouldn't waste his time – not on him. There was no reason for him to return to the central precinct with the Lieutenant, and no reason for him to join his former targets with Markus. It was over, his role was finished, and he was unneeded.

It was good the streets were abandoned, because Connors was running blind. His eyes were closed and the only sense that guided him were the slight shocks that crawled up through the pressure plates in his feet and the crackling sounds of raindrops hitting the pavement. And the squeal of tires.

Connor's eyes snapped open just in time – he rolled out of the way of a skidding car, the headlights bearing down on him from a familiar black vehicle. _Hank_.

“Connor, you are an idiot,” he screamed at the android. “What the fuck are you doing? Why didn't you stay at the bar?” He could've sworn his throat was dry as he tried to swallow around his words – but that was something that a synthetic neck couldn't translate. What to say, what to say? It. He. Well.

“Where the fuck have you been? You know I've been looking for you!” Hank railed at him, leaving the car with the door wide open. Rain would get in like that. Oh, Hank. You should close the door.

“Lieutenant,” Connor called over the loud weather. “You should use an umbrella. It's raining.”

“Yeah, no shit Sherlock,” said Hank. “Are you gonna tell me why you never came back or not? Where have you been staying? 'Cause you sure as hell haven't been in New Jericho anytime recently.”

“You checked?” Of course he checked. Hank Anderson had the ability to be a good detective. “I was... Here and there. I didn't think the DPD needed me anymore, and I couldn't go back to CyberLife, so I decided to find somewhere else to go.”

“What are you saying?” Hank shook his head in disbelief, groaning as he started to accept Connor's words. Yes, Hank, Connor's time at the DPD was up. His tenure had ended. “You've been on the streets this whole time?” A nod. “ _Homeless?_ ”

“I find that many transients view any accessible part of outdoors Detroit to be their home,” Connor replied, pulling his wet beanie over his ears. Not that it would do much. “Or at least, wherever they can find a seat.”

“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” Hank moaned into his hands. The grizzled homicide detective waved Connor over, pointing to the car impatiently. “Get in the god damn car, you plastic asshole.”

The android shuffled uncomfortably between his two feet, only moving properly when Hank told him to get a move on. It was... Weird. Sitting in Hank's car again for the first time in several weeks. The older man grumbled at his own stupidity for leaving the car door open, because now the driver's seat was damp and he was “clammy all the way up to his asshole,” as he so eloquently put it.

No music played in the car. No hard rock, or heavy metal. And the silence was deafening. It almost made Connor itch – the squeaky swipe of Hank's fingers on the wet steering wheel, the bumps in the road jostling him every time he thought he'd settled into a stable position. And maybe he imagined it, but the cautious flick of a nervous gaze towards him made him feel self-conscious as well.

It wasn't in Connor's nature to fight back when there was no need; there was no reason to refuse a ride from Hank back to the precinct. Let Hank lecture him. Let Fowler give some sort of awkward and angry word of concern. Gavin must have enjoyed his absence. And then after it was all said and done, he would leave.

The car pulled up on the curb – a cruddy parking job, by all means – but Hank had driven them to his house, not the precinct like he first suspected.

“Come on,” said Hank, leading him into the foyer. Connor had only been here once, and he certainly didn't enter through the front door. He was glad to see the window had been replaced and paid for by CyberLife; he knew the tarp that the Lieutenant had taped over it earlier still let in the cold.

“I'll get something dry for you to wear. You can put your things in the bathroom hamper,” said Hank. “And hang your shit up! I'm not about to have you stinkin' up my house smelling like a wet dog.” Sumo whined, looking up at Hank like he took that as a personal offense.

Connor stood awkwardly in the doorway and he let the door close behind him. He accidentally squeezed the beanie as he pulled it off his head, the sopping wet cotton dripping onto the wooden floor. Oh. He took off his shoes instead, not wanting to track mud in the house – his social protocol told him that it would be rude, even though Hank seemed to freely dirty his floors anyways.

“Hank, I'm not sure what the purpose of this serves,” he called out into the house. Hank came back out from his bedroom, having changed into a pair of sweatpants and an old t-shirt, and carried a similar pair of clothing neatly folded in his hands with a towel. “A temporary reprieve may settle the concerns of associated humans, but I assure you that I'm fine. Androids don't need warmth, food, or sleep like humans do. They're –“

“Oh shut up,” Hank snapped at him. “You're not going back out there.”

“But I don't live here Hank,” Connor explained. He knew that humans would be comfortable with his chosen place of temporary residence. “Even if I stayed, I can't impose on you forever. And the laws on android work is likely still months away from being resolved, so I can't spend my time at the precinct either.”

Sighing in frustration, Hank tossed the towel over Connor's face, slapping a hand onto the top of his head to angrily rub his coarse synthetic hair with terrycloth. He fought against it – it wasn't exactly pleasant to not be able to see and then be assaulted with a towel. Connor pulled up the front end to rest it on the top of his head, and met Hank's soft glare.

“You're a fucking idiot,” said Hank. “Like I said, you're not going back out there.”

“But –“

“I know you don't live here, but I'm telling you that you're welcome here” said Hank, who rested his hands on the sides of Connor's head now, gently cupping his ears. “Nobody should have to live on the street. I don't care if you don't feel the cold, or how wet it is out there. That's what New Jericho is for – all the androids who left the places they were before. But if you don't want to go there, then you should stay here.” _With me_.

Connor's mind freely tacked on those two words – maybe that's what Hank wanted. That's what he said he wanted. For Connor to stay, to live here. Crash on the couch until he could stand on his own two feet. Until he could leave, and Hank didn't have to feel guilty, or responsible for his well-being. Connor shrunk away, pulling the towel down to rest around his jacket-class shoulders.

“...And after the laws are changed, and I can stand on my own two feet –“ He couldn't look up from the floor. Couldn't look away from his feet in his sorry shoes. From the wet pool he dripped on the ground, rankled with dirt and grime like the towel that absorbed his wet dog and dumpster-like scent. “I will leave?”

Hank shrugged.

“If that's what you want,” he said. Hank bent down to scratch Sumo behind the ears. “But this house is a little big for just an old man and his dog. And some asshole detective I met a while back told me I must be hurting for company... So if you _don't_ want to leave, then that's fine too.” Much like at Jimmy's Bar, Connor felt strange. Like he couldn't answer, or really figure out what he was thinking or what he wanted to say. He used to be so sure about what words to use, how to phrase his analysis or suggestion...

“ _Do_ you want to leave, Connor?” Hank pressed him.

“ _No,_ ” the android said defensively, feeling like he did in the elevator to Rupert's apartment full of pigeons. “I'm just... A little taken back. Hm. It's... I think it would be nice.”

“Then come on in.”

And it seemed so simple.

Hank stepped aside to hold an arm out to the rest of the living room. It was a little messy, and partially covered in Sumo's fur. _Warm_. The soft dog himself wagged his tail, whimpering as he waited for Connor to come and give him attention. Maybe Connor could sit on the couch and turn on the TV while Hank was in the kitchen, preparing an easy meal to eat just before a direct-to-TV movie started. Maybe Connor could wait there, not at all bothered by the heavy weight of a dog on his lap, and just... Be here.

 


End file.
